FINAL WEEK

[strangerpeople]

FINAL WEEK

[Well. What else can be said? The Little Courtesy is over. You have all survived. You are now going to your final destination-with invitations to boot. And Charlotte will be getting that private audience, as promised.

But it's not over. Everyone knows it. Confrontation is inevitable. The question is what, exactly, will happen when that confrontation happens-or if anyone will in fact be able to go with Charlotte when it happens. But you've gone this far. There's no turning back. There has to be a way.

Nothing has been certain, or simple. Whatever happens will be no different from the horrors of the Little Courtesy. Perhaps the saying might still hold. Will all be well? Will it?

It must. God help everyone if it isn't.

Seven is the Number, but there are nine strangers left in this place.]

Comments

[eternaldivide]

Seeing one Earth from another ... I wonder if they have some sort of relation to one another. I ... doubt it'd be anything like the worlds I know... but it's a possibility.

[biddentodance]

Pretty sure. Heard something about this before. Wefts. Replacement...

[eternaldivide]

... It's not impossible for them to use Wefts as replacements for something, if that's what you're thinking.

[biddentodance]

No, I....this universe's Earth was replaced by another Earth. Sounded like how this started.

[eternaldivide]

... Did what you see give you a possibility as to how it happened? What could have been the Suns, maybe?

[biddentodance]

A red sky, countless lights descending...concepts born.

[eternaldivide]

Countless lights descending from a red sky ... in which concepts were born. I wonder if there was something -- or someone -- that had cast those lights down.

[biddentodance]

The lights were concepts - like...physical embodiments, maybe? Seen that kind of thing before - experienced...

[eternaldivide]

Hm ... and here I was thinking of it as a sort of Judgement ... Would you say it's similar to what you have experienced?

[biddentodance]

Judgement's probably close, though. And...not sure. Dealt with Death, personally...

[eternaldivide]

Casting Judgement on the world would be fairly similar ... back in my world. Albeit it wouldn't be a physical embodiment of concepts ...

Well ... if one Earth has replaced the other, than the original Earth would've died, wouldn't it.

[biddentodance]

Most likely no lights involved with the Fall - Nyx is of the night...

Don't know. Didn't get an answer to that. Thought maybe they just....swapped. [Hoped that, at least.]

[eternaldivide]

Seems we have a different concept on judgement, then.

Regardless ... it doesn't seem this is something that we can simply try to figure out ourselves. Not without more information on these Earths you've seen if that was all.

[biddentodance]

Think the Suns here are Judgements. ...The Fall is just the end. Not sure about judgement....time's great equalizer.

Have....one idea for finding out more....

[eternaldivide]

The Suns are Judgements ... it makes sense but--

[ Wait what did he say. Half of him wants to just say No but ... ]

If you plan on using that needle again then I'm going to ask for you to allow me to do the same, or simply allow me to do it instead. It doesn't make sense for only one of us to do so if we're both trying to figure out what it means.

[biddentodance]

Doesn't seem to take much, so....if you really want to.

[A little finger prick isn't worth fighting about. He holds up the needle.]

Who first?

[eternaldivide]

[ Mithos considers it for a moment. ]

I'll go first. It'll be easier for you to prick yourself after since you're holding it.

[ And with that Mithos will extend his hand and ... press his finger down on the needle to prick it. ]

[biddentodance]

Alright.

[He holds it steady, and when Mithos is done, he wipes it off and pricks his own finger.]

[1/2] Mithos (SUNLESS SKIES SPOILERS)

[strangerpeople]

[Mithos feels pain. Agony.

And then--





A painful sorrow. A memory of horror.

You came all this way. You came all this way for answers. You read the scrawled notes of the dead as you passed.

"...SHE HELD MY HEAD BENEATH THE WAVES... MY MURDERER, MY LOVE..."

"...GOD, I AM SORRY FOR MY SINS WITH ALL MY HEART..."

"...IF YOU READ THIS I'M SORRY..."

"...WHERE ARE YOU WHERE ARE YOU WHERE..."

"...EATEN BY... NOT FAIR... I WAS HUNGRY TOO..."

"IS THIS ALL THERE IS?"

You didn't know. You did not know. Your hair whips around your faceless head as you proceed, Logoi-concepts themselves-watch you almost greedily. Your memories are but faint right now, as you hold Bobby in your hands. Bobby lets out a bark. Soon enough, though, he is reunited with his master, and you are alone as you press deeper into this horrible place, where you are cleansed with fire, and mixed with others in boiling blackness, until you are...fit to die.

This is death. This is where souls end up. But you are not dead. You are alive. But you came here to see. You had to know.

Your soul screams-or is it you? who screams-angrily, fearfully, as you finally come upon the true reason your world had to be brought here-

if only you could have done something, anything, but it is all gone, it is all over, you can see Death's Door begin to open--


And then it is done. Mithos is back in the present, but the sensations linger. The flames, the facelessness, the yipping of the dog. The terror.]

[2/2] Minato (SUNLESS SKIES SPOILERS) [cw: existentialism]

[strangerpeople]

[You see what is Beyond when those massive doors open.

It is worse than you thought. Souls jump in, or are pushed in by others. All end up within the light of the Sapphir'd. You cling to life, as hard as you can, your brown hair a furious flag. And you see it.


You see the machines. The wheels and cogs large as planets, the pillars of frozen lightning, the massive arms as they pick and pull. It is with a preciseness that you see what happens to the dead as they are risen up towards that absolute Law, as the Judgment's machines pull them in, and just as easy as one pops the cap of a mushroom, just as easy as one crushes a fistful of sand-

This is no eternal afterlife, as he might have believed in.

This is brutal, meticulous, swift unmaking. The souls you had traveled with up to this point-nearly all are no more. Finally, you can look through the light no more, and you turn your head away to cry.

You feel pain. No-not just pain. Rage. This is not right. This could not be right, or fair. But nothing here was right, or fair. There is no higher reason for what happened. There was no honor in this, but what did these hungry things know of honor? What was the Replacement, then, but an act of naked greed?

For what was existence to these things, but a means to sate their hunger?

What can you do-]

[eternaldivide]

[ Well ... Mithos is just going to be gripping his sleeves for a little bit and trying to keep his breathing steady as the sensations linger. Something about all that felt .... real. Though trying to think about it beyond what he felt and witnessed just now only gives him a headache on top of everything else.

Like looking though something opaque, as it were. ]

[biddentodance]

[The needle clatters to the floor. Different this time - he was right, it's definitely something. Relevance remains to be seen, but he's sure... Because it matches other things he's heard. There is something very valuable here. He's out of breath.]

...so that's.....what he is.... What Death is....in this universe...

[eternaldivide]

[ Mithos continues to try and even his breath more, but he glances up at Minato. ]

What ... exactly did you see?

[biddentodance]

....Think it was what passes for an afterlife, here... Doors opening, and- souls in the light of a sun, not the green one, pretty sure it was a sun, anyway... Cogs. Machinery, taking them apart, piece by piece. Felt....anger. Felt, thought, a lot of things, not sure who I was but I wasn't me.

Suns...Judgements...they hunger.

[eternaldivide]

There was ... a door for me as well. After walking and ... my soul getting ready to die. I wasn't dead ... but I wasn't alive, either. Sorrow and ... terror ...

It wasn't me either but ... not sure who I was either.